Hello and welcome back to the African Roots Podcast! My name is Angela Walton-Raji and you can reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com

Today is New Year’s Eve, and this is a good time to reflect on the past year and look ahead to the future.

The year for me was good with travel everywhere from Reno NV, to western Arkansas, Eastern Oklahoma, and down south to Birmingham, Alabama. I attended a family event, and later a history event in Reno, for Bethel AME Church.

I met some new people, including a man who descended from the slave owner’s family of my Oklahoma ancestors. I appreciate the relationship that I now share with Colin Kelly of Eastern Oklahoma as we both continue to search for ancestors on our shared history.

I appreciate all of the friends I spent time with, old and new, and I look eagerly to the future.

I must, on this eve of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, direct you to a wonderful site: About our Freedom. This site created by Robin Foster is a blog that you must visit. It is devoted to those first days of Freedom and the history of what happened to our ancestors during those critical years as freedom emerged. You might know Robin’s work fro Saving Stories—-well this blog is a must!

On the eve of the Civil War I can announce that I also will be uploading a new blog devoted to the US Colored Troops. By next week, it will be up and running.

So—let us move towards this New Year, with renewed vigor to research the past, find the documents—and to get the story right. By doing so, we will be able to call our ancestors’ names.

So keep doing what you do, keep researching, keep documenting, and keep sharing what you find.

One Response to “African Roots Podcast #91 Dec 31 2010”

Wow, Angela, thanks! My Grandma Otis used to say, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Thanks for sinking the roots slow low and the trunk so high that I could find a place among the branches.

I feel strongly that we will find great strength as we combine
heritage + history + right thinking. We have yet to get the history right and to crowd out backward thinking. We have a great opportunity to do all three at once now.

We will find documentation of our ancestors, or at least see the world through the eyes of their contemporaries in the meantime.

All the technology, resources, and people like yourself to guide and direct are at our disposal. It has never been a better time.
Thank you for helping me to see the great importance of it all through your vision and this podcast.

Meta

About Me

Author of "Black Indian Genealogy Research", Member of AAHGS -Afro-American Historical & Gennealogical Society, Founding member of AfriGeneas, Faculty for Samford IGHR, and MAAGI -Midwest African American Genealogy Institute, PAAC-Preservation of African American Cemeteries